Maturity Through Marriage

In my opinion, one of the key points in growing up is to know when to give in and when to fight for your rights or needs. It's like saying that growing up means learning to repress my ego for a better cause. That is why I believe marriage will have a strong impact on one's maturity. That being said, it greatly depends on how a married person responds to possible conflict in his/her marriage. 

In each marital conflict, much like in everyday conflict, every single person has at least two options; to fight or take flight? In their effort to fight for a solution in a single conflict, they will have a chance to grow. I'm not saying that fleeing is a bad option. I'm just saying that fighting gives more opportunity to learn. 

I'll continue with an example. Let's say I love playing games. There was never a day where I didn't play games. Let's say I at least spend more than 4 hours to play every day. That means more than 28 hours a week or more than 120 hours a month. 4 hours may not be a big number in a single day. However, this does not apply if you're currently working from 8 to 5. 

In every working day, 4 hours should be significant if we allocate them for other activities. Such routines wouldn't be much of a problem when we're single. Let's just say that we have all of our time for ourselves. However, this is not the case when we're married. At the very least we have to spare our time for our spouse. In this case, that would mean reducing my game-time. So should I reduce my game-time or have my spouse cope with my routine? This is not a difficult question. The answer would be sparing more time for my spouse. Either that or have my spouse play games together with me.

Above is just a simple example of repressing my needs for a better cause. Although it might not be that simple if I were addicted to games. The point is, by repressing my needs for game, I'm growing up. We all know that less selfish means more mature. The more we are able to repress our selfishness, the better we are in maturity.

Moving on to another example. Find something more basic and more difficult to overcome. Find something that we define "white" while our spouse define "black". Find something where we are faced with two options, that is to strictly define "white is white" or to go with "white is black". Find something that is so basic that we have to beat our logic just to cope with the fact that "white IS black". If you've found those "white" and "black" situation and in the end you've decided that "white is black", then it's two thumbs up for you. Defeating logic is not a simple matter. To acknowledge something against your believes requires a great effort. If you're willing to accommodate your spouse that far then you're already in the maturity zone.

I'd like to emphasize that this is not about being weak in our marriage. When the time comes where we need to defend our opinion then defend it at all cause. The key point is going for a better cause where we realize that it is much more important to cope with our spouse instead of being persistent. It all comes back to how we respond to such marital conflicts. Maintaining our relationship in marriage requires constant communication and understanding. During our communication with our spouse, there will be a chance to understand their thoughts or needs. In our effort to understand and accommodate them, we will find ourselves more and more mature. So, are you married and mature? 

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PDF version: http://www.4shared.com/file/97684294/37723365/MaturityThroughMarriage.html

Diklat Teknis Substantif Dasar Pajak II

Hari ini menjelang akhir minggu ketiga Diklat Teknis Substantif Dasar Pajak II (dtsdp2). Beberapa materi sudah selesai dibahas, yaitu Tugas Pokok dan Fungsi Direktorat Jenderal Pajak (Tupoksi), Pengantar Hukum Pajak (PHP), Ketentuan Umum dan Tata Cara Perpajakan (KUP), Pajak Penghasilan (PPh), Bea Meterai (BM), dan Penagihan Pajak (PP). 3 dari materi-materi tersebut sudah diujikan, yaitu Tupoksi, PHP, dan KUP.

Masuk jam 7 pagi sampai jam 5 petang. Istirahat yang dijadwalkan hanya 15 menit pada pukul 10:15, 1 jam pada pukul 12:00, dan 15 menit pada pukul 15:15. Aku merasa jadwal yang diberikan terlalu padat. Kadang aku merasa materi-materi yang diberikan seperti dipaksakan untuk selesai sekedar untuk mengejar waktu yang tersedia.

Hal ini terasa sekali saat materi tentang PPh. Beberapa kali aku merasa tertinggal dalam pembahasan terutama untuk bagian-bagian dengan istilah-istilah akuntansi yang tidak aku mengerti. Pada waktu-waktu seperti ini, banyak hal yang terpaksa aku acuhkan agar aku bisa terus mengikuti pembahasan yang diberikan pengajar di depan.

Rasa bosan juga berperan besar membuat aku tertinggal dalam pembahasan. Rasa bosan ini muncul saat pembahasan materi berjalan tanpa variasi. Saya berterima kasih pada pengajar yang membuat variasi metode pengajaran dengan memperbanyak diskusi kelompok. Selain itu, bukan saya bermaksud untuk tidak disiplin, saya pun berterima kasih pada pengajar yang berkenan menambah waktu istirahat. :)

Kadang timbul pertanyaan dalam diriku. Kenapa jadwal diklat ini sangat padat? Aku yakin beberapa pengajar juga merasa waktu yang mereka miliki untuk mengajarkan materi mereka sangat minim. Aku pribadi berpikir lebih baik jangka waktu diklat ini diperpanjang menjadi 12 minggu atau lebih. Intinya agar pengajar tidak perlu tergesa-gesa mengajar materinya. Selain itu peserta pun punya lebih banyak waktu untuk memperdalam materi yang diberikan.

Sampai saat ini aku berpikir alasan memilih 8 minggu untuk jangka waktu diklat karena ingin menyegerakan persiapan calon pegawai siap pakai. Direktorat Jenderal Pajak memang sangat membutuhkan tambahan pegawai. Hal ini terlihat jelas dengan jumlah calon pegawai lebih dari 1.200 orang. Alasan lain mungkin terkait dengan alokasi dana untuk diklat. Biaya pengajar, biaya konsumsi, dan biaya lainnya tentu membengkak karena harus melatih lebih dari 1.200 calon pegawai. :)

Terlepas dari itu semua, aku BOSAN! :p

GUI Improvements for Gmail

Gmail looks in the eyes of internet users, especially email owners, and said, "Uploading attachments are less tedious and easy to estimate if you're using ME instead of other email service providers."

Gmail now provides multi-select and progress bars to help their users when they're attaching more than 1 file.

Some people might not consider this additional feature as something important, but this is actually parts of the principles in GUI (Graphical User Interface) design. The multi-select feature is about making even the simplest task simpler to do; that is uploading multiple files. The progress bars provides better feedback for users so that they can easily estimate how much longer will it take for the upload to finish.

I'm glad that the Gmail team never stopped enhancing Gmail. Maybe that's one of the reason why they keep the word "beta" close to the Gmail logo. That means they'll never forget that what they have right now is just the beta version and requires more and more improvements.

What about you, Yahoo?